The ATTIGO TT was created by Scott Hobbs, a student at Dundee University studying innovative product design. For his final year project he’s created a touch screen turntable that lets DJ’s loop, sample and scratch wave forms just as you would a record. The size of the touchtable is approximately the same as a standard turntable, making the physical interaction nearly the same. Where this takes off is in the flexibility and features included right at your fingertips, no longer locked up on a computer screen. The ATTIGO TT is currently a working prototype, and Scott is looking for manufacturers to partner with.

12.28.2008

12.27.2008

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Someone has told the city of Anchorage what it can do with its cease-and-desist order to prevent Snowzilla - the giant snowman - from rising up again this winter in an east Anchorage neighborhood.

Snowzilla - thought to be no more - is yet again. Someone again built the giant snowman in Billy Powers' front yard. Snowzilla reappeared overnight....For several years, Snowzilla has risen in the front yard of Powers' modest home. His children - he has five still at home - collected snow from neighbors' yards to make the snowman big enough. Each year, Snowzilla got a bit bigger.

Not everybody in the neighborhood liked all the cars and visitors who came to see him.

City officials this year deemed Snowzilla a public nuisance and safety hazard. A cease-and-desist order was issued. The city tacked a public notice on Powers' door.

City officials said the structure increased traffic to the point of endangerment and that the snowman itself was unsafe.

“In a society that mostly talks about money,” says Margaret Atwood, who keeps a half-dozen copies of “The Gift” on hand at all times to distribute to artists she thinks will benefit from it, “Lewis carved out a little island where you can say, ‘Life doesn’t always work that way.’ ”

Kinetic sculpture remains one of the most enchanting fusions of technology and high art. A perfect example opened recently near Zurich at the Swiss Center of Technorama. Artist Reuben Margolin worked with museum staff to suspend 450 aluminum rods by 256 wires and connect 3,000 pulleys and sliding bars. The resulting specimen uses pure mechanics—not computer-controlled servomotors—to create almost limitless figurative shapes. The effect isn't far removed from the recent kinetic installation by ART+COM at the BMW headquarters in Munich.

"The Disappearing Male is a CBC documentary about one of the most important, and least publicized, issues facing the human species: the toxic threat to the male reproductive system. The last few decades have seen steady and dramatic increases in the incidence of boys and young men suffering from genital deformities, low sperm count, sperm abnormalities and testicular cancer. At the same time, boys are now far more at risk of suffering from ADHD, autism, Tourette's syndrome, cerebral palsy, and dyslexia. The Disappearing Male takes a close and disturbing look at what many doctors and researchers now suspect are responsible for many of these problems: a class of common chemicals that are ubiquitous in our world. Found in everything from shampoo, sunglasses, meat and dairy products, carpet, cosmetics and baby bottles, they are called "hormone mimicking" or "endocrine disrupting" chemicals and they may be starting to damage the most basic building blocks of human development"

12.10.2008

Tonight is WUOG's last night at Memorial Hall. I've been listening to the broadcast online. Earlier I heard this song. I couldn't stop myself from crying. I realized how I'll continue to look back on this past summer as one of the happiest times of my youth. It was quintessential. Jocelyn, Diana, Eddie, Ash, Daniel, Seth, I miss you all and hope to see as many of you as I can over the holidays.